Wednesday, July 1, 2015

The EU published a document presenting the agreement reached over Net Neutrality:

"The rules enshrine the principle of net neutrality into EU law: no blocking or throttling of online content, applications and services. It means that there will be truly common EU-wide Internet rules, contributing to a single market and reversing current fragmentation.
The basics:

Every European must be able to have access to the open Internet and all content and service providers must be able to provide their services via a high-quality open Internet.

All traffic will be treated equally. This means, for example, that there can be no paid prioritisation of traffic in the Internet access service. At the same time, equal treatment allows reasonable day-to-day traffic management according to justified technical requirements, and which must be independent of the origin or destination of the traffic".

Yet,

"The rules also enable continued network and service innovation by defining the principles underpinning the relationship between Internet access services and innovative services with specific quality requirements .. These are services like IPTV, high-definition videoconferencing or healthcare services like telesurgery"

However,

Are we not promoting a two-tier Internet? No

Zero rating .. we have to make sure that commercial practices benefit users and do not in practice lead to situations where end-users' choice is significantly reduced. Regulatory authorities will therefore have to monitor and ensure compliance with the rules

See "Roaming charges and open Internet: questions and answers" - here.